Charles Darwin

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Transcript of Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin's scientific work Charles Darwin Who is Charles Darwin .Charles Darwin was a naturalist born is Shrewsbury, England on February 12th 1809

.He attended the University of Edinburgh Medical School

.He married his cousin Emma Wedgewood, who was 3 months older than him, in 1839.

.He is remembered for his scientific contributions in the field of evolution and naturalism

.He died on April 19th 1882, aged 73 .Darwin became interested in natural history from the age of 8.

.He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh with his brother Erasmus in October of 1825, but hated it there.

.He was also taught taxidermy by John Edmonstone

.He joined the HMS Beagle on December 27th 1831 and was gone for almost 5 years

.He released his book "The Voyage Of The Beagle" in 1839

.He released his book "On The Origin Of Species" on November 22nd 1859 .So his father reluctantly sent him to Christ's College in Cambridge for a Bachelor of Arts degree . Charles Darwin on the HMS Beagle The Voyage of the Beagle On the Origin of Species Evolution Evolution is the change in the inherited characteristics of biological populations over successivegenerations. Naturalism Naturalism is any of several philosophical stances wherein all phenomena or hypotheses - commonly labeled as supernatural - are either false or not inherently different from such natural phenomena or hypotheses. .On August 29th 1831, Charles Darwin was offered a supernumerary place on the HMS Beagle, proposed by his friend,the famous botany professor John Stevens Henslow.

.The voyage began on December 27th 1831 and lasted almost 5 years.

.Darwin spent most of that time on land investigating geology and making natural history collections, while the Beagle surveyed and charted coasts.

.Despite suffering badly from seasickness, Darwin wrote copious notes while on board the ship.

.Their first stop ashore was at St. Jago where Darwin found that the white band high in the volcanic rock cliffs included seashells.

.At Punta Alta in Patagonia he made a major find of fossil bones of huge extinct mammals in cliffs beside modern seashells, indicating recent extinction with no signs of change in climate or catastrophe.

.High in the Andes he saw seashells, and several fossil trees that had grown on a sand beach. He theorised that as the land rose, oceanic islands sank, and coral reefs round them grew to form atolls.

.On the geologically new Galapagos Islands Darwin looked for evidence attaching wildlife to an older "centre of creation", and found mockingbirds allied to those in Chile but differing from island to island. He heard that slight variations in the shape of tortoise shells showed which island they came from, but failed to collect them.

.The Beagle investigated how the atolls of the Cocos Islands had formed, and the survey supported Darwin's theorising. Atolls an atoll is an island that encircles a lagoon .The Voyage of the Beagle was published in 1839.

.The book, also known as Darwin's Journal of Researches, is a vivid and exciting travel memoir as well as a detailed scientific field journal covering biology, geology, and anthropology that demonstrates Darwin's keen powers of observation.

.Darwin's notes made during the voyage include comments illustrating his changing views at a time when he was developing his theory of evolution by natural selection and includes some suggestions of his ideas, particularly in the second edition of 1845. .On the Origin of Species was published on 24 November 1859

.Its full title was "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life", but was shortened for the sixth edition of 1872.

.It introduced the scientific theory that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection.

.It presented a body of evidence that the diversity of life arose by common descent through a branching pattern of evolution.

.Darwin included evidence that he had gathered on the Beagle expedition in the 1830s The Charles Darwin Song Charles Darwin's Religious Views .Charles Darwin began to question the literal truth of the Bible after he studied John Herschel's science which sought explanations in laws of nature rather than miracles and saw adaptation of species as evidence of design.

.He believed that all creatures evolved from a common ancestor over millions of years through a process called natural selection. . Charles Darwin was baptised into the Church of England and went to a Church of England boarding school.

.He never doubted the literal truth of the Bible and set out to become an Anglican Clergyman at Cambridge

.On board the Beagle, Darwin would quote the Bible as an authority on morality

.On his return he was skeptical of the Bible as history.

.Though he thought of religion as a tribal survival strategy, Darwin was reluctant to give up the idea of God as an ultimate lawgiver.

.Darwin argued with himself over whether he agreed with his own findings as he felt they questioned his Christianity. He famously said "It was hard to disagree." Charles Darwin's Scientific Views Charles Darwin Quotes "At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world" "On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we gain no scientific explanation" "We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universes, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act." "My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts." "I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me."